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TRANSCRIPT
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has issued a two-year temporary exclusion order against an Australian woman currently held in Syria’s Al-Roj detention camp.
She's part of a group of 11 women and 23 children, linked to the IS Group, as the wives or widows of I-S fighters who travelled to the region.
Mr Burke told ABC’s 7.30 report that the woman facing the exclusion order is considered a high-level security concern.
“This individual is somebody who migrated to Australia under the Howard Government, received citizenship under the Howard Government and went to Syria under the Abbott government."
The remaining families not subject to a temporary exclusion order have instead been issued restricted single-entry passports.
These allow a citizen’s return to Australia without granting the broader travel freedoms of a standard ten-year document.
However, Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration Jono Duniam is questioning why the government issued travel documents at all.
“The minister last night said, it's just like getting a Medicare card. You just get it. You apply. You're an Australian citizen. You get it. Well, the fact of the matter is under the Passport Act and under the criminal code, if someone who is an Australian citizen, or of course a dual national - travels to a declared terrorist zone, they can have their passport revoked by the Minister for Foreign Affairs based on advice from a competent authority like ASIO or the AFP. If that was the case, and passports were revoked, why then now, as the minister confirmed that these individuals, all of them, have been provided passports to travel back to Australia?"
The Prime Minister has said that the government has no choice but to issue passports to the group, because they are legally entitled to them as Australian citizens.
But Mr Burke says any members of the group who successfully return to Australia will face the full force of the law for any crimes they may have committed while abroad.
“Some of them will have to weigh up whether or not the reality of coming back to Australia is that they won't be living at home because of criminal charges that’ll be brought.”]]
But while the government maintains that those who joined the IS Group must live with their choices, some members of the group say it's not so simple.
One of those held in the Al-Roj camp is Zahra Ahmad, a mother of three boys, who spoke with SBS Dateline in 2024.
AHMAD: "But my - What I would like to say is don't be so quick to judge try and look at it from our perspective. We are also mothers you know. We're human beings at the end of the day - we are - I mean the fact that we're saying that we're willing to comply to whatever the government wants - you know we're not hiding."
REPORTER: "You'll often hear in Australia you made this bed you can sleep in it. What do you say to that comment?"
AHMAD: "I - I didn't make this bed so I'm not gonna answer that you know - because it's - for me that doesn't apply, for most of the women in the campus it doesn't apply."
REPORTER: "What do you mean by that?"
AHMAD: "I mean that we're now forced to suffer for the decisions that other people other you know - male influences have made on our behalf and now they're all gone and we're left to suffer."
Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin KC is a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria.
The Professor has told the Australian government that there is evidence to show that many of the women are victims of the IS Group in their own right.
“I would encourage Mr Albanese to read the UN women report on Northeast Syria that describes in exquisite detail how so many of these women were coerced, trafficked, compromised into travel by both patriarchical family structures and by choices that were not of their making. For many of these women they are victims of IS as much as other victims and so I think it's sort of two convenient for governments to lock everybody into one sort of category and not actually takes the time and assess as sophisticated political and legal systems do which is assess each individual figure out their responsibility if there's criminal responsibility - apply it.”
The majority of citizens seeking to return are children, and Australian law prohibits issuing temporary exclusion orders to anyone under the age of fourteen.
Dr Aoláin says that abandoning these children in detention camps creates a far greater risk than bringing them home to Australia.
“If you leave kids in these kinds of conditions it is not rocket science - meaning no education. Severe ill treatment. No choices. No opportunities and you leave them in a complex very dynamic situation where the opportunities to be radicalised or high then you will get radicalisation."]]
Save the Children launched a 2023 Federal Court challenge to compel the group's repatriation, but the case failed after the court ruled Australia has no legal obligation to intervene in a camp outside its physical control.
Save the Children CEO Mat Tinkler has told the ABC that the women are ready to cooperate fully with Australian law enforcement if it means they can return home safely.
“In the past they volunteered to be subjected terrorism control orders which would be very onerous conditions placed on who they can meet, where they live, how they communicate with people. The law enforcement authorities and security agencies know who these women are. They know where they're going to live. We believe that the best way to mitigate any risk that they oppose is to put faith in our security, in law enforcement agencies.”
